Syria: The extermination of the people in revolt - The regime’s chemical weapons

Statement of the Revolutionary Left Current,
21 August 2013
Damascus.
Reposted from International Viewpoint

The dictatorial regime continues its policy of extermination of our people. Hundreds of Syrians, including a significant number of women and children, died in the early morning of August 21, 2013, the victims of weapons of extermination using toxic gases and the undeniable use of chemical weapons, in the neighbourhoods of eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, in the context of the most violent military attack by the regime carried out this morning on the areas in revolt.

For more than two years, the list of abuses and sacrifices suffered by the masses of our people has grown incessantly. It is impossible to count the hundreds of thousands of martyrs, the wounded, the imprisoned and the millions of exiles and refugees. The torture of our people continues. Their cries are lost in the air and a deadly silence engulfs human consciousness.

The massacre and coercion of our people continues, perpetrated by the machine of death and destruction of a regime which transcends fascism in its savagery. It is a tragedy that the world has not known in a long time, the tragedy of a people insurgent for its freedom and its liberation from the grip of a dictatorial regime, savage in its repression and in its exploitation of the oppressed of our country, in the service of the interests of a small bourgeois clique.

Our revolution has no sincere ally, except for the revolutions of the peoples of the region and the world and the militants who work to free themselves from obscurantist, oppressive and exploitative regimes.

This odious criminal act by the ruling clique against isolated civilians reflects cynicism about human life and this at the very moment when the counter revolutionary forces have begun to organise their attack against the revolutions at the regional level, led by Saudi Arabia and its allies. The regime will have found there an opportunity to commit its abominable massacre. Yet our people, in revolt and determined, tested by their wounds, will continue their resistance against the criminal tyrants, will defeat them and punish them as they deserve for their crimes.

We will bury our dead and tend to our wounded. We will be more determined and resolute in our struggle for the fall of the murderous and predatory regime and the victory of our popular revolution.

For the building of a Syria of freedom, justice, equality and social justice!

Neither Washington, nor Moscow!

Neither Riyadh, nor Teheran!

Glory to the martyrs! Recovery to the wounded!

Victory to the popular revolution!`

All power and all wealth to the people!

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Gaddafi falls, let the people decide

Statement by the NPA, 21 August 2011
Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA)
From International Viewpoint


On February 15 and 16, 2011 after the fall of Ben Ali and Mubarak, it was the turn of Libya to see a popular movement develop against a 42 year old dictatorship. The arrest of a human rights activist in Benghazi led to riots to demand his release, which Gaddafi met with violent repression. This was the opposite effect which happened: resistance, the liberation of Benghazi from the yoke of Gaddafi’s representatives and the extension of the revolt to the neighbouring towns and regions.

The revolutionary processes underway in Tunisia and in Egypt gave courage to resist repression. Over the last six months, the revolt has spread while, one month later, under cover of a resolution from the UN, the member countries of NATO attempted to hijack the process underway by an aerial military intervention. The NPA condemned this intervention. Its objectives were clear: to cover up for their support until the end, past and present, of the dictatorships in place, while getting their hands on a country rich in oil and gas resources.

The fall of the dictator Gaddafi is good news for the peoples. The NPA is entirely in solidarity with the revolutionary process which continues in the Arab region. To finish this process the peoples will need to vanquish the two faces of the counter revolution: that of the dictatorships, starting with that of Bashar al Assad in Syria, and that of the confiscation of their destiny by the imperialist powers.

A new life opens for the Libyan people. Freedom, democratic rights, the use of the wealth originating from natural resources for the satisfaction of the fundamental needs of the people are now on the agenda.

August 21, 2011.

-The Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste was founded in February 2009, on the proposal of the LCR, French section of the Fourth International. As a broad anti-capitalist party it is not itself linked to any international current. The members in France of the Fourth International are in the NPA.

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Egypt's Joy: Toppling the Autocrat

Tariq Ali
CounterPunch
February 11-13, 2011

A joyous night in Cairo. What bliss to be alive, to be an Egyptian and an Arab. In Tahrir Square they're chanting, "Egypt is free" and "We won!"

The removal of Mubarak alone (and getting the bulk of his $40bn loot back for the national treasury), without any other reforms, would itself be experienced in the region and in Egypt as a huge political triumph. It will set new forces into motion. A nation that has witnessed miracles of mass mobilisations and a huge rise in popular political consciousness will not be easy to crush, as Tunisia demonstrates.


Arab history, despite appearances, is not static. Soon after the Israeli victory of 1967 that marked the defeat of secular Arab nationalism, one of the great Arab poets, Nizar Qabbani wrote:

Arab children,
Corn ears of the future,
You will break our chains.
Kill the opium in our heads,
Kill the illusions.
Arab children,
Don't read about our suffocated generation,
We are a hopeless case,
As worthless as a water-melon rind.
Don't read about us,
Don't ape us,
Don't accept us,
Don't accept our ideas,
We are a nation of crooks and jugglers.
Arab children,
Spring rain,
Corn ears of the future,
You are the generation that will overcome defeat.

How happy he would have been to seen his prophecy being fulfilled.

The new wave of mass opposition has happened at a time where there are no radical nationalist parties in the Arab world, and this has dictated the tactics: huge assemblies in symbolic spaces posing an immediate challenge to authority – as if to say, we are showing our strength, we don't want to test it because we neither organised for that nor are we prepared, but if you mow us down remember the world is watching.

This dependence on global public opinion is moving, but is also a sign of weakness. Had Obama and the Pentagon ordered the Egyptian army to clear the square – however high the cost – the generals would probably have obeyed orders, but it would have been an extremely risky operation for them, if not for Obama. It could have split the high command from ordinary soldiers and junior officers, many of whose relatives and families are demonstrating and many of whom know and feel that the masses are on the right side. That would have meant a revolutionary upheaval of a sort that neither Washington nor the Muslim Brotherhood – the party of cold calculation – desired.

The show of popular strength was enough to get rid of the current dictator. He'd only go if the US decided to take him away. After much wobbling, they did. They had no other serious option left. The victory, however, belongs to the Egyptian people whose unending courage and sacrifices made all this possible.

And so it ended badly for Mubarak and his old henchman. Having unleashed security thugs only a fortnight ago, Vice-President Suleiman's failure to dislodge the demonstrators from the square was one more nail in the coffin. The rising tide of the Egyptian masses with workers coming out on strike , judges demonstrating on the streets, and the threat of even larger crowds next week, made it impossible for Washington to hang on to Mubarak and his cronies. The man Hillary Clinton had referred to as a loyal friend, indeed "family", was dumped. The US decided to cut its losses and authorised the military intervention.

Omar Suleiman, an old western favourite, was selected as vice-president by Washington, endorsed by the EU, to supervise an "orderly transition". Suleiman was always viewed by the people as a brutal and corrupt torturer, a man who not only gives orders, but participates in the process. A WikiLeaks document had a former US ambassador praising him for not being "squeamish". The new vice president had warned the protesting crowds last Tuesday that if they did not demobilise themselves voluntarily, the army was standing by: a coup might be the only option left. It was, but against the dictator they had backed for 30 years. It was the only way to stabilise the country. There could be no return to "normality".

The age of political reason is returning to the Arab world. The people are fed up of being colonised and bullied. Meanwhile, the political temperature is rising in Jordan, Algeria and Yemen.

Tariq Ali’s latest book “The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad’ is published by Verso.

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Tunisia: The social and democratic revolution is on the march!

Fathi Chamkhi
International Viewpoint
January 2011

The Tunisian popular masses have just made erupted onto the political scene in a spectacular fashion! They have succeeded, after 29 days of a social and democratic revolution, in driving out the dictator Ben Ali! This is a great victory!

It is a great day for us all, which we share with all those who are fighting against the world capitalist order! Above all, we have re-conquered our dignity and our pride, which for a long time had been ridiculed and dragged through the mud by the dictatorship. Now, we have a new Tunisia to build: free, democratic and social.


But right now the counter- revolution is on the march! Ben Ali has fallen from power but his regime, although destabilized and weakened, is trying to maintain itself in place. The Destourian party/state is still there, and so are its liberal capitalist economic and social policies.

This regime, which is presented as an example of a “star pupil” by the international financial institutions, this regime which bled the Tunisian popular masses for 23 years, for the benefit o f an international capital that is greedy for profits, while enriching a minority of families, grouped around the government and organized in gangster clans, must go. That is what we want!

We refuse the attempt that is under way aimed at confiscating our revolution. This operation is being presented under the formula of a “government of national unity”, with which this illegitimate regime is trying to hang on to power.

At the same time, the defeated regime has unleashed its over-armed militias, including the personal guard of Ben Ali, which are sowing terror in the big cities of the country, in particular in Tunis and its suburbs. Groups coming from the disinherited and famished masses are also taking advantage of the current chaos to help themselves in the supermarkets: in particular Carrefour and Geant. Bands of looters are positioning themselves along the principal roads of the country, making it dangerous to travel! Basic products are starting to be in short supply or are non-existent: bread, milk, medicine…

The regime, which has demobilized the police force in the cities and the National Guard in the countryside, is letting all this happen, taking advantage of the chaos to impose its own solutions. The introduction of the curfew and the deployment of the army – which lacks manpower and which has never had to face this kind of situation before - do nothing but worsen the fear, since it is during the night that the armed militias act! Everywhere, citizens are trying to organize their own defence, often in coordination with the army. Thousands of “popular citizens’ defence committees” are being set up to defend the population.

Only the establishment of a provisional government, without any representative of the Destourian regime, which will have the responsibility of preparing free and democratic elections, regulated by a new electoral code, for a constituent assembly, will be able to allow Tunisians take control of their destiny again, and to establish, in their country, an order that is just and beneficial to the mass of the population.

If the people aspire one day to live, destiny can only yield to their will!

Tunis, January 15, 2011

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-Fathi Chamkhi organizes RAID (Assembly for Alternative International Development)-ATTAC and the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM) in Tunisia

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